The Virginian

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Who makes monsters?

I have been blogging about the hateful way the Virginian Pilot and it's editorial page editor Donald Luzatto has depicted conservatives. Richard Fernandez analyzes this phenomenon and explains why dehumanization of your opponent is primarily an occupation of the Left.

Who makes monsters? Mostly the Left: because of its huge presence in the media and the arts, the Left has traditionally manufactured the most hate-objects. They’ve done it for so long that it has become almost a birthright. The photographer Zombie has documented dozens of calls from the left, from demonstrators to celebrities, for the assassination and murder of President George W. Bush. But that’s not a crime, is it?

Click on the Zombie link and you will find hundreds of images of George Bush which advocated his murder or depicted his death. Here is an image from an Obama campaign rally in 2008 depicting Bush after being decapitated.

Why did this not evoke the outrage of the Leftists in the MSM or people like Luzatto?

The discrepancy is probably because the Left has long appointed itself the guardian of the freak-minting industry. It is a prerogative that is jealously guarded. Thus Glenn Reynolds could receive this insulting email calling for civility without the slightest irony. “I cannot emphasize this enough: your brand of public discourse is hurting our country. It us poison. So fuck you, you GOP utensil, and fuck your mother for bringing you forth.” Get it Glenn? So too could Ann Coulter be threatened by protesters at the University of Ottawa to prevent her from making a “hate speech.” S**t flows downhill. There is no mystery to that. It’s Leftist physics.

If it doesn't outrage the Left, it's not an outrage. Get it?

But as in physics, to any action there is an equal and opposite reaction. People who get smeared and demeaned by the people with the press megaphone grab their own megaphone and begin to shout back. They stop buying the newspapers that employ the haters. And they turn to a medium that gives them a voice.

One might argue that the explosive growth of the blogosphere has been driven by its utility as an adaptive optical appliance through which to view the media. But it’s a hell of a way to run a railroad. Since the reality “out there” is first distorted by the media to the point where the discerning members of the public must apply a further distortion to make the image sensible, we inflict a huge signal loss on the viewer. There is no guarantee that the applied corrections don’t do more harm than good. Back in the days of the anti-Marcos underground I asked someone why he bothered to read either the government newspapers or the Communist Party propaganda sheet. He replied, “I buy it for date, my friend. It’s still good for telling me what day it is.”

Just so. The theme du jour in the MSM is that the Right is stirring Americans to rage, to racism and to do violence. Ignoring their own crimes is part of that theme. And it's a useful distractions from the dismay that a majority of Americans are feeling over the headlong lurch into vastly greater government control, skyrocketing taxes and deficit spending that is literally unlike anything this country has ever experienced.

At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law let me quote one last ime from Fernandez' article:

because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

The big lie is always better for ideologues than the small lie. The risk for the country is that the lies of the Left will not just be corrected, but will be over-corrected until we no longer have the ability to approximate reality in a world where reality and truth is vitally important.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

And a "fuck you" to the purveyors of the crap sandwich in the media. From the American Spectator.

There is a quiet anger boiling in America.

It is the anger of millions of hard-working citizens who pay their bills, send in their income taxes, maintain their homes and repay their mortgage loans -- and see their government reward those who do not.

It is the anger of small town and Middle American folks who have never been to Manhattan, who put their savings in a community bank and borrow from a local credit union, who watch Washington lawmakers and presidents of both parties hand billions in taxpayer bailouts to the reckless Wall Street titans who brought down the economy in 2008.

It is the fury of the voiceless, the powerless, the ordinary nobodies of Flyover Country who are ridiculed, preached to, satirized and insulted by the Celebrity Loudmouths of the two Left Coasts, the Jon Stewarts and Keith Olbermanns, the Paul Krugmans and their ilk.

It is the salted wound of the millions who see that ruling Democrats in Congress are not listening to them but are willfully ignoring public opinion and the verdict of recent elections in passing a huge new health care entitlement when the existing entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are already going broke.

It is the frustrating helplessness of citizens who revere the Founding Fathers and the genius of the Constitution that they wrote, who actually believe the words of the Constitution mean what they say, not more and not less. They who watch politicians and the courts stretch and bend that Constitution -- finding "rights" not enumerated, powers never granted, meanings unimagined -- believe that their country is being redefined without their consent.

Most of the angry are not out marching in the streets, waving signs or shouting into bullhorns. And they are not smashing windows or phoning death threats to politicians. They are simply waking up angry in the morning, and going to bed angry at night. And their resentment is multiplied by the media's efforts to portray them all as dangerous, crazy people, and by the effort of certain Democrats to tar them with brush of violent intent.

They are embittered, too, by the rhetoric of a triumphant president who turns on its head Winston Churchill's heroic attitude promising defiance in defeat but magnanimity in victory. For a president of a deeply divided country, defiance in victory is not an endearing posture. It has all the persuasive charm of a Chad Ochocinco victory dance in the end zone of the opponent's stadium.

These quietly angry people gather in their churches while their religions are called divisive and their beliefs are labeled as bigotry, and they pray for a better day. They talk among themselves in their Main Street cafes, at the Rotary club or at their kids' softball games, seeking others who understand their frustration and will not respond with arrogant dismissal.

They are tired of being told they are too stupid to understand the country's complex problems, too rooted in the past to find solutions, too selfish to share what they have worked for with everyone else who wants it.

They are not reaching for guns or for pitchforks. They are holding their anger within, waiting for their time, watching those in power over-reach and over-indulge.

Their wound is deep, and it will not be salved by more presidential speeches, Congressional hand-outs, or promises of wonderful things to come. They no longer believe any of that. Their quiet rage abides, waiting till it can be expressed in that silent place behind the curtain where the ballot lists the names that they have now committed to an angry memory.

With apolgies for a full reprint. And as one commenter at the American Spectator said "AND WE'RE SICK OF BEING CALLED RACISTS BY RACISTS!"

The Virginian Pilot's Bonfire of the Vanities

The Virginian Pilot states that it is committed to its focus on local news. So why is today’s headline about the FBI rounding up a bunch of loudmouths in Michigan who fantasized about fighting the power (as the Left is always saying we must do)? Simple, look a the pictures: the accused are white ... and the article tells us ... religious. They are a bunch of Sherman McCoys; destined to represent the evil of whiteness, Christianity and are the stand-ins for Conservatives. We will not have to wait even a moment before the Hutaree morph into the Tea Party movement on the pages of the MSM.

The indictment on the Hutaree "militia arrests" is out. From my read, even taking every word in it as gospel, it sounds like these guys were angry loudmouths who fantasized too much to someone who turned out to be a federal informant or agent, but who they thought was a potential comrade who might help them obtain some explosives.

I may be wrong on this, the government will have its opportunity to prove its case in court, and the defendents will have their opportunity to, well, defend themselves. (I have written and blogged in the past on the generally weak nature of the government's past highly publicized "domestic terror" busts.) It is way too early to decide exactly how much of a real threat to other people's lives and property these guys were.

The editors of the Virginian Pilot are simpatico with the bloggers at the Daily Kos, not surprising since they share many of the same fringe left beliefs of the Kossites.

...bloggers at DailyKos ...are thrilled to see "sedition" being called by its true name, and appearing to presume that, well, the government wouldn't charge someone with something if they weren't guilty.

Ever heard of Hutaree? Neither have I. But we can be sure that (in the words of Glenn Reynolds):

I’m sure top lawyers from top law firms on Wall Street and K street will be lining up to provide the Huttaree militia with a pro bono defense, too.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

RahmFuck you. That's who I am. You know why, mister? You drove a fucking Buick to get here. I drove a half million dollar bulletproof Secret Service Escalade. THAT'S my name. And your name is you are wanting. You can't play in this game, you can't close them - go home and tell your pollster your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this congress: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you fucking faggots? A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING. C-B-S. Create. Bullshit. Sob stories. C-N-N. Cocksuckers. Need. News footage. M-S-N-B-C. Might. Soon. Need. Bailout. Cash. Listen pally, you put on the screws because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks. Get out there - you got the swing votes coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk in ask about earmarks lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their votes. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it? What's the problem, pal?

BarneyYou. You're such a hero, you're such a bigtime vote wrangler, how come you're coming down here wasting your time with such a bunch of bums?

We Report, You Obey – The MSM’s Dirty Tea Party Fetishby Andrew Klavan

But I think the real source of Obama's ignorance is that he is our first postmodern president. ... Also, the fact that Obama was likely a benefactor of the "diversity" fraud, means that he had even less cognitive equipment than the typical student to resist the neo-Marxist indoctrination he was about to receive....

Is it any wonder that this remains Obama's primary mode of argument when it comes to addressing conservative objections? You know, "some people say that we should hunt down children of the poor and bury them alive in shallow graves. But Democrats don't believe that. We have a better idea."

Democrat Plot Uncovered!

This was recorded on the same day that Virginian Pilot editor Donny Luzatto was getting the orders from DNC HQ to predict a bloodbath caused by the Tea Party, talk radio, Fox and anyone else not an ObamaBot:

INTERIOR UNDERGROUND DC PARKING GARAGE. BOTTOM LEVEL. NIGHT.

Libra’s footsteps echo off the walls. The buzz of a flickering neon light is heard. In the corner of the garage a whole sector of lights has gone dark. Shadows thicken. A lighter flickers in the darkness as a cigar is lit.

LIBRA: Carthago. Countersign?

CENTURION: Delenda est. Sort of overly dramatic don’t you think?

LIBRA: Not paid to think. What is the assignment?

CENTURION: The Wing thinks it’s time to lay a little blue smoke between the mirrors. Take the heat off our team and torch the other side. That’s your job.

LIBRA: Fine. How wet does the Wing want it to get?

CENTURION: We project that if three team members are sent down it should put a stop to any attrition in November.

LIBRA: Wouldn’t taking out just one serve the same purpose?

CENTURION: No. It has to look like a pattern.

LIBRA: Fine. Any particular team members you need erased?

CENTURION: Nobody from Chicago or San Francisco. And from safe seats only. We need to preserve the count. Renegade’s very keen on that.

LIBRA: Level of obfuscation?

CENTURION: None. Public and messy. “Accidents” would be counter productive. But no families. Renaissance would be upset.

LIBRA: Timing?

CENTURION: Within the next 10 days. It would be best if all three were within the same day.

LIBRA: You want target clearance and notification?

CENTURION: No. This will be the last contact for this contract.

LIBRA: Half to the Bahamas account by noon tomorrow and the half on completion to our friend in Costa Rica.

CENTURION: Done.

LIBRA: Anything else?

CENTURION: No. If we need you again we can always find you.

LIBRA: That’s what you people always think. Oh, by the way, was that stuff about you being naked in the showers the real deal?

Coulter's visit, finally, did have one permanent utility. It was another vivid illustration of how elastic and feeble, at least in certain quarters, the Canadian understanding of free speech has become. The idea, evidently held by certain of the protesters, that merely to call something "hate speech" licenses an attempt to halt that speech is depressing because it has become so common.

Canada and the US are not that culturally different. The Obama administration and the US media is trying to turn us into "Canadians" at a rapid pace. For exhbit "A" check out this. and this.

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

The Democrats have tried to change the subject away from their health care debacle by claiming that conservatives are threatening violence against them. Their complaints are pathetic where they are not out-and-out lies (e.g., Clyburn and Lewis), and they have taken a lot of well-deserved criticism. It is liberals, not conservatives, who rely on ad hominem attacks, outrageous allegations and violent imagery. We talked about this on our radio show today, and several callers reminded us of a particularly sorry episode of liberal violence that, for some reason, has not gotten much attention: the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul.

I attended the convention and remember the terrorist acts that were carried out by anti-Republican protesters very well. They threw bricks through the windows of buses, sending elderly convention delegates to the hospital. They dropped bags of sand off highway overpasses onto vehicles below. Fortunately, no one was killed.

These were anti-Bush and anti-Republican protesters. Is it a stretch to think that some of them, at least, may have been inspired by over-the-top, hateful attacks on the Bush administration by Democratic Congressmen, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Michael Moore, who was a guest of honor at the Democrats' own convention, various show business personalities, and many other leading liberal figures? I don't think so. We haven't seen that sort of hate campaign since the Democrats went after Abraham Lincoln. It seems unlikely that none of the "protesters" who tried to commit murder were inspired by those liberal voices.

Yet, hardly anyone seems to be aware of the violence that took place in 2008. At most, the story was treated with a ho-hum attitude in the press. For some reason, political violence was not a concern less than two years ago. Yet today, we can hardly imagine what would happen if a group of tea partiers were to drop sandbags off a highway overpass, trying to kill motorists below. Liberal reporters' heads would explode. Yet this is exactly what anti-Republican Party protesters did in 2008, and no one cared. To my knowledge, not a single Democratic politician condemned this anti-Republican violence or attempted in any way to distance the Democratic Party from it.

Keep that in mind next time you hear a Democrat whining about the Republican effort to "fire Nancy Pelosi."

And not a single protest was uttered by the managers, editors or writers for the Virginian Pilot. From this we can only conclude that violence against Republicans is OK.

But it’s also possible — I’d say likely — that there’s something else going on. I think Obama expects Israel to strike Iran, and wants to put distance between the United States and Israel in advance of that happening. (Perhaps he even thinks that treating Israel rudely will provoke such a response, saving him the trouble of doing anything about Iran himself, and avoiding the risk that things might go wrong if he does). On the most optimistic level, maybe this whole thing is a sham, and the U.S. is really helping Israel strike Iran, with this as distraction. The question for readers is which of these — not necessarily mutually exclusive — explanations is most plausible.

I believe that Obama thinks that Israel may strike Iran. He knows that his administration will not stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Effective international sanctions are going nowhere, stalled in the UN. US military intervention is off Obama's table. Israel sees a nuclear Iran as a mortal threat to a country the size of Israel. So Iran's nuclear weapons program must be stopped or Israel will cease to exist ... the only question is when the end would come. If Israel strikes, Obama will be able to say that he had nothing to do with it.

If Israel does not strike ...

As a man who blames white people for the condition of black people, seeks to transform America into a replica of Europe (with it's rabid embrace of anti-semitism) was raised in early childhood in an Islamic culture, has a spiritual mentor who has expressed his hatred of Jews and whites, hatred of Jews is certainly a possibility. We certainly know that his administration's support of Israel is less than any administration since that country's founding. The elimination of Israel would solve a number of problems for him in the Arab world.

I don't think that he's egging Israel on. In the case of Obama vs. Israel, what you see is what you get.

As Donny Luzatto tells us that our political discourse has taken a sharp turn for the worse, it helps to be reminded by people like Luzatto - people with "convenient" memories who once had the power to edit the past - that Luzatto's fellow ideologues regularly threatened to kill George Bush.

But that was all right, because Bush was white, or Bush was Hitler, or Bush was a "Rethuglican," or "Bush lied people died" or ... make up your own slur. And many of the unhinged fringe of the political spectrum, the part that Luzatto inhabits, did just that.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Today, the Venezuelan government arrested Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Globovision Television, the only remaining television on public airwaves critical of Hugo Chavez. According to the government, Zuloaga made offensive comments about Chavez (which is against the law in Venezuela) while speaking at a conference of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in Aruba, where media representatives criticized the Venezuelan regime’s crackdown on freedom of speech.

Many of Chavez’s most ardent supporters here in the U.S. come out of the “media reform” movement, which believes that our corporate media has been thoroughly co-opted by capitalists bent on destroying the benevolent leadership of the likes of Chavez. They think that our capitalist-plagued media world is in dire need of reform.

The chief proponent of this thinking – which amounts to an unprecedented government intrusion into our own country’s media -- is Professor Robert McChesney, founder of the Orwellian-named Free Press, one of the most influential organizations in the growing “media reform” movement on the far-left.

Free Press’ curious stance on media reform can best be summed up by McChesney who suggests that, “Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself."

Is this a fringe group? Well, no.

All of this could be ignored as the comical rantings of a loony leftist professor safely ensconced in the tenured halls of academia, were it not for Free Press’ astonishing -- and growing -- influence on policymaking within the current administration and Congress.

As hard as it may be to believe, McChesney and his indefatigable band of media revolutionaries are being taken seriously by some policymakers in Washington. They are granted regular audiences with those overseeing our nation’s media policy at the FCC and FTC, and meeting regularly with members of Congress.

Their latest plan to defacto nationalize the media calls for the federal government to bail out newspapers with $60 billion in new government subsidies. As anyone familiar with Washington knows, money does not come free: Such subsidies will virtually invite the government into the fourth estate as overseers. Richard Nixon must be rubbing his eyes in disbelief. But Free Press tells us not to worry. Such media reform will have safeguards in place to protect the freedom of the press from government influence.

Read the whole thing. The Virginian Pilot has already fallen into line.

Going from bias to insane

Donald Luzatto directs the Virginian Pilot’s editorial page. Today he flipped from bigotry to insanity. His op-ed rant entitled “Setting the stage for bloodshed” was a full throated cry for murder. Blaming the elevated partisan animosity on a mix of racism, paranoia, the economy and the “electronic media.” The latter, of course, means Fox News, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, the villains of the piece who he calls out by name.

"Something horrible is coming. We know it. We can feel it.”

So says Donny Luzatto. And he calls Beck paranoid?

“The national shouting match has become so crazed, so hyperbolic, so frenzied, that violence seems almost inevitable now. The victim might be a politician. It might be a media figure. More likely, it will be a bystander. But there will be blood sometime soon.”

Luzatto was in a coma inspired by his insipid writing when blood was spilled as SEIU goons beat up a black man selling mementos at a Tea Party rally. But conservative blood, most especially black conservative blood doesn’t count for Luzatto.

“This has been coming for two years now, spurred by a mix of racial resentment, paranoia, financial distress and a dominant electronic media that have abandoned anything like perspective and responsibility.Turn on Fox News any given evening (actually, don’t; it will destroy your soul).”

This is the “responsible” and “objective” rulers of the MSM telling us how to save our souls.

Turning to Glenn Beck, Donny accuses him of saying this:

“You want a fundamental transformation? We are flipping this upside down. God will be at the bottom. Marxism will be at the top. Morals will be at the — why are they not teaching morals?”

Teaching morals? The horror! For reasons which I am not sure I know, Donny thinks this is a damning indictment of the man.

He then drags in Rush Limbaugh without pointing to an actual quote. Perhaps he could not find Rush saying something damning about promoting morality.

People like Donny Luzatto remind me of the old, old story about prisoners who told the same jokes over and over. They became so familiar with them that they finally numbered the jokes and – to save time – they would call out the number at which point everyone fell down laughing. In Luzatto-World it really is no longer necessary to tell us what Beck or Limbaugh said to get outraged, invoking the name is all that’s required. That’s what the MSM does. It talks to the prisoners of the printed press and everyone understands the jokes.

So what does Donny Luzatto foresee?

“That’s the line of responsibility. It’s undeniable. It will lead to violence. And it will end with blood.”

During the election, Luzatto and the rest of the MSM cabal told us how Obama would bring us all together, would transcend the old politics of class and ideology and race. The election's over and now he's calling for blood! A call to get “them” before they get “you.”

Nice going Donny. In a way, Obama may accomplish that unity: a people united against him and the hemorrhoids like Luzatto that carry his water and call for violence.

UPDATE: It seems that the word has gone out to the Leftists in the media from people like Josh Marshall that this is the time to change the subject and accuse Republicans of inciting violence. Even as the incitement is from THEM. When was the last time you saw a Conservative riot?

UPDATE 2: At Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski reflect on the Left and the media's decision to demonize everyday people:

There appears to be a concerted effort among the political Left and many mainstream media people to demonize and marginalize the expanding citizen-based movement known as the tea party movement. This effort flows from both a fear of what these tea parties represent and a contempt for everyday Americans. But those ordinary citizens are poised to be the ones laughing when it’s all over, when democracy takes its course.

America’s history of grassroots activism goes back to the founding of our republic. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people includes as a necessary element those same average, ordinary people being able to gather and speak out. This freedom to assemble was considered so essential to a free nation that our Founders put it in the First Amendment, right alongside the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Ironically, these rights are set side-by-side with the freedom of the press, as well. The leftists in the media would do well to remember that their liberty to be a free press comes from the same constitutional amendment as the tea party crowd’s liberty to gather together.

And our elected leaders would do well to remember that the First Amendment exists to protect average people from the government, not the other way around.

So Donny's dog whistle call for violence against ordinary people in his insane desire to shut them up so that only HIS voice be heard is not going to work. It is people like him who are being marginalized and relegated by the "new media" and people gathering at Tea Party rallies to the irritating ravings of the homeless, drug and alcohol addled bums hanging around the Virginian Pilot neighborhood.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

How a lie become "The Truth"

By now it’s an axiom that the Tea Party people are racists, bigots and homophobes. That they shout racial slurs, spit on blacks and call Barney Frank a fag. This is done in the old fashioned way, the same way that in times past black men were accused of raping white women and then strung up. All that was needed was an accusation, it was passed around in gossip, amplified via the press megaphone and … we have another lynching.

We don’t lynch blacks any more; we go in for a more high tech lynching in this wired world. We have the accusation, followed by the credulous will to believe. Why would a virtuous woman lie about being raped or a civil rights hero lie about being spat on?

In the past, it’s a she said, he said story. Today we live in a wired world where every action is recorded in living color and surround sound. Yet strangely enough, none of the microphones picked up those racial or sexual slurs. None of the cameras tracked the arc of that spit. But why would they lie, what is there to gain by painting their opponents as racists and bigots? It’s a real puzzlement, isn’t it?

Despite the lack of evidence, this accusation is morphing into “The Truth.” Here’s a video of how CNN is doing it.

Nearer to home, we have the editorial page of the Virginian Pilot creating “The Truth” by printing two letters to the editor denouncing the racist Tea party and an Op Ed by Leonard Pitts whose subject is always and everywhere the issue of racism in America telling us that the KKK is reborn in the opposition to ObamaCare.

“Free, but ugly, speech” by letter writer Joseph Heckel accuses the demonstrators of hatred and bigotry and “defaming the president.” Apparently dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism.

“Echoes of Selma” by letter writer Frances Wolf not only knows that John Lewis was called the “N-word” but knows that the epithet was used exactly 15 times. To her this brought to mind Selma and water hoses. Really!

And Pitts ("Tea parties' racist face" is how the Virginian Pilot headlines it), of course, because he Authentically Black™ is allowed to use the whole word “nigger.” After implying in no uncertain terms that the Tea Party movement is really the reincarnation of the KKK, he adds that not everyone who opposes ObamaCare is a Klansman, just those who have the audacity to protest. To “professional blacks” like Pitts, who would not have a writing job if he could not write about white racism, everything is about race, especially the government’s control of health care.

So the Virginian Pilot is doing its part to turn a lie into “The Truth.” No one ever needs to prove their point when “everyone” knows the narrative. Why would that virtuous woman, or that civil rights hero, lie?

But as the American people become more aware and get their information from ever expanding sources, the Pilot and its editors are, more and more, talking to themselves while those who watch from outside their popular delusions wonder why these people are so self destructive of their own most valuable asset: their credibility. By now, to mix a metaphor, that coin has been utterly debased.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

“I would like to tell you about what happened to a small and orderly group of private citizens when we tried to visit the local office of Rep. Cuellar. We were bringing over 300 letters that were urging the congressman to vote NO to the healthcare bill now under consideration in the House. The staff closed the office and left the building in order to avoid meeting with us. In order to make certain that the staff had the letters we had to slide them under the door. I have attached a photo of one of the citizens sliding the letters under the door. . . Notice how this “Radical” is cleverly disguised as middle-aged business man!

A wealthy businessman who raised money for leading Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding three major banks out of $292.2 million in loan transactions, Reuters reported.

I'm surprised that the association to the clintons and Obama was mentioned at all in the NY Slimes.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Brown Bailout

Frank Luntz: The Unabomber Has a Higher Approval Rating Than Members of Congress Right Now (Video)

Sean Hannity: Let’s go to Nancy Pelosi to responding to why it’s been hard to acquire the votes necessary. Here’s what she said.

Pelosi: Every vote is a heavy lift. We have great diversity in our caucus. We don’t have a rubber stamp Congress. (hah) or rubber stamp Caucus. So we have our full airing of issues. Members want to see these figures. They want to see what the senate will do. We like the dynamic in our caucus. But it does show the impact of the campaign of misrepresentation of fear that is going on out there. There is no limit to what the other side will do to protect the insurance companies (Huh?)

Sean Hannity: Wow. And they’re the ones who met with the pharmaceutical companies. How well did that go over?

Frank Luntz: “We don’t have a rubber stamp Congress?” Make no mistake, when someone says we don’t have “X” that means this is exactly what we have. And, when she said it is a misrepresentation by the other side and its promotion of fear, the fact is she’s actually disqualifying those opposed to this legislation. I think that is why the intensity is so much in favor of the Republicans right now on this issue. And, that is why only 37% of Americans support this. Nancy Pelosi is right. The American people are afraid. She’s just not listening… Sean, yes, the Unabomber has a higher favorability rating than some members of Congress right now.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Ann Coulter offers her health care reform, and takes a swipe at Obama ... of course.

In the first sentence, Congress will amend the McCarran-Ferguson Act to allow interstate competition in health insurance.

We can't have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they'd make insurers compete.

The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn't afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she's got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama's use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio's state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited OB/GYN visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics -- you know, things like cancer.

The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies.

Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

ERIC HOLDER, DUE-PROCESS CIVIL LIBERTARIAN: “Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive. . . . [Holder] predicted that events would ensure ‘we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden’ not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.”

They told me if I voted for McCain, the war on terror would be run by a bloodthirsty cowboy who’d make a mockery of civil liberties. And they were right!

These people live in an alternative universe where rhetoric rules and reality intrudes only as catastrophe.

Scott Brown's Reply to Obama's Weekly Address

Sex, Religion and the Media

Should legislators be forced to attend Muslim prayers?

The Virginian Pilot editors this morning came out with an editorial condemning 10 members of the Virginia legislature for avoiding a prayer by a Muslim cleric whose mosque was one that the 9/11 Jihadists highjackers attended. That seems to be a strange position to take for a member of the MSM that has in the past voiced opposition to prayer in public venues on the theory that a prayer said on public grounds is a slippery slope to the establishment of theocracy in America.

The Virginian Pilot’s editorial board has always been a haven for Lefties and it seems that they have taken up the cudgel for forced attendance at prayer, as long as it isn’t Christian prayer.

It also illustrates an insidious mindset that explains the atheist Left’s antipathy toward Christians expressing their faith in public. We have all read about the class valedictorian whose expression of belief in Christ was censored. But the media appears to consider it an outrage that ten members of the Virginia legislature chose not to participate in a religious ceremony by an Muslim cleric. They seem to believe that people should be forced to attend a ceremony that is devoted exclusively to a public prayer.

It’s not as if the legislators made a show of leaving the room, or made the kind of rude display that President Obama did when he chided the Supreme Court in his State of the Union speech. If we are to believe the outraged squawks coming from the Pilot’s editors, they went to the bathroom or dawdled in another room during the Imam’s prayer. Imagine the outrage if atheists or Buddhists or Muslims should be forced to attend a prayer breakfast sponsored by a Christian group.

I have a lot of admiration for the “Richmond 10.” Perhaps the next time the Imam speaks, more would join them. If we cannot be allowed to show our displeasure with a religious sect that inspires mass murder, terrorism as its primary weapon, killing on religious grounds and the stated desire to subject the world to its belief, not through persuasion but through force we have lost the war of ideas.

But of course in other acts of displeasure the Pilot editors are totally consistent. They are all for boycotts, demonstrations and walk-outs … as long as they are conducted by one of their pet groups.

Hypocrisy is not the exclusively at home on the Left - and its MSM wholly owned subsidiary - but it has moved in and left its toothbrush there.

The strange role of Sex on the Left.

Meanwhile in an adjacent part of the forest, the Virginian Pilot editorializes against Virginia’s Attorney General Cuccinelli’s letter advising Virginia’s schools and colleges that it is against the law for them to classify homosexuals as a protected class. And he’s right. Virginia law forbids it. And it’s the Attorney General’s job to make sure that the laws of Virginia are observed. But the editors believe that laws are for little people, that their sense of moral entitlement trumps the law. And of course, Virginia’s school administrators have been among the first to include gays in their list of people with special status.

Since gays are one of the Virginian Pilot’s protected pets, inveighing they go against Cuccinnelli and Governor McDonnell for contributing to Virginia’s “culture of intolerance” by not supporting a bill that would give the Governor power to create another class of protected pets.

Without the slightest sense of irony, on the Op-Ed page they publish a column by Margaret Carlson which accuses Conservatives of making a hero out of Democrat Eric Massa. For those who have been in a coma for the last week, Massa accuses the Democrat’s leadership and White House aides to Obama of forcing him out of office because he opposed ObamaCare. He tells a titillating story of being ambushed by Presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the House shower room while both men were naked with Emanuel poking a finger in his chest.

Since Emanuel’s in-your-face slash and burn tactics are no secret, Massa’s description of Emanuel as the “devil’s spawn” who would “sell his own mother for a vote” sounds about right for a Chicago pol. But for some reason, Massa is now the subject of editorial scorn on the Left. Why? It turns out that the married Massa is a homosexual – or at least swings both ways.

Under the Virginian Pilot rules, you would expect Lefties to rush to the side of their oppressed pet. That these ad hominem attacks should cease. Someone should be interested in finding out why the accusations against Massa have been held back until just before the ObamaCare vote. But no; the guy’s gay and what he claims has no credibility whatever. For some reason, gays who are outed lose their credibility if their accusations are made against the Left.

Don't get me wrong, opinion leaders on the Right, notably Limbaugh and Beck both consider Massa has serious problems and neither is a fan of his politics or his ethics. But thieves and criminals often give each other up, and that may be what we're seeing here.

There’s a principle here. To the Left, what they do, say and think is right and if you disagree you are not merely wrong but evil. The editorial board believes that if you disagree with them that gays should be a protected pet you’re a bigot. On the other hand, if you accuse the Obama administration of forcing you out of office because you are gay, you’re a nutcase. The pleasant thing about the new age is that these people are being exposed for the pompous fools they are, their platform is discredited and the impact of their own hateful bigotry is lessening.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Two specific complaints were filed against ACORN for alleged voter fraud in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively. As part of its continuing investigation into alleged criminal activities of ACORN, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents concerning this matter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.” Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…” Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old. By burdening these election officials with fraudulent registrations, ACORN put those who legally registered at risk of not being put on voting rolls at all.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.

But another ACORN group was prosecuted and pled guilty to doing exactly the same thing.

In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud. Oddly, the FBI document that details the shut down of the Connecticut investigation seems to ignore this legal issue.

The elections in Iraq and the ongoing development of representative institutions in that country are what we who supported George Bush throughout his Presidency were hoping and praying for.

Bush's opponents were declaring the war lost. Even more despicable they were calling the war wrong, the rationale for the war a lie, the conduct of the war immoral and the soldiers who fought in it criminals.

Now that Iraq is a success, the critics, the opponents and the liars who smeared the Bush administration are claiming the success as theirs.

RONALD REAGAN liked to say that there was no limit to what a man could accomplish if he didn’t mind who got the credit. The transformation of Iraq from a hellish tyranny into a functioning democracy will be recorded as a signal accomplishment of George W. Bush’s presidency, and he probably doesn’t mind in the least that the Obama administration would like to take the credit....

In 2006 and 2007, few Americans expected to ever see such a magazine cover. Over and over they were told that the war in Iraq was lost, that there was no military solution to the carnage there, and that invading Iraq had been the biggest mistake in US history. Bush’s decision in January 2007 to change strategy and “surge’’ an additional 20,000 additional troops into Iraq was scathingly denounced. Such a “fantasy-based escalation of the war,’’ wrote The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, “could only make sense in some parallel universe where pigs fly and fish commute on bicycles.’’ Senator John Kerry called the surge “a senseless decision.’’ Barack Obama, gearing up to run for president, warned that doubling down in Iraq was not “going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.’’

But the critics were wrong. The surge turned the war around, giving Iraq a new lease on life. Where Saddam once ruled a ghastly “republic of fear,’’ Iraqis live today in democratic freedom and relative peace, dispelling daily the canard that democracy and Arab culture cannot co-exist.

Thanks to the global web spun by the Internet, the Left and its bootlickers in the state-run-media can no longer get away with the "Big Lie." They will be forever branded by their shameful words and deeds.

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happens

The return of Louis XIV

There are 12,533 federal lobbyists in Washington at present. The federal budget is $3.55 trillion dollars. Most of the lobbyists are concerned about money, either as it affects the commercial interests of businesses or causes. Do the math, which works out to each lobbyist fighting to get $283 million dollars spent for his company, trade group or cause. Figure each lobbyist costing a million dollars and that’s a good investment in getting your part of Americans’ money.

The cost of getting hold of the trillions sloshing around the Federal sty is not that high. As government gets bigger, the cost of getting rich at the people’s expense goes down. To the history minded, it’s beginning to smell very much like the Sun King’scourt.

In Australia, the Labor government, eager to flaunt its green credentials, instituted a nationwide environmentally-friendly roof-insulation program, using energy-efficient foil insulation. It certainly reduces the carbon footprint of many Aussies’ homes: At the time of writing, 172 of them have burned down. It reduces your personal carbon footprint, too: Four installers of the foil have been fatally electrocuted. As the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair noted, the foil-insulation program has a higher fatality rate than Oz forces in Afghanistan. And, if the electrician survives long enough to get the installation completed, the good news is that, unlike the electric Zamboni, the electric attic always has plenty of juice: Colin Brierley had the foil insulation put into his Gold Coast home and was electrocuted a week later. The environmentally friendly electric shock entered through his knees, exited from his head, and led to a nice stay in hospital in an induced coma.

Australians are not happy to discover their ceilings double as the Bride of Frankenstein’s recharge slab. Belatedly canceling the program, Peter Garrett, the Environment Minister, is nevertheless insistent that he bears no responsibility for the burnt-out rubble and charred citizenry. He is a celebrity politician, formerly the lead singer of the rock band Midnight Oil, but he has no intention of getting burned by what they’re calling “Midnight Foil”. As Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, breezily told a TV interviewer, “Peter Garrett can’t be in every roof in this country as insulation is being installed.”

They never are, are they? Likewise, the European Union grandees and eco-poseurs of the US Congress who mandated sudden, transformative increases in “biofuel” production and at a stroke turned the food supply into part of the energy industry and made grain more lucrative as fuel than as sustenance weren’t there in Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Mexico and even Italy when the food riots broke out. Nor was Al Gore able to be up there on every one of California’s 14,000 abandoned wind turbines. They’re not entirely useless, not if you’re an ornithosadist who enjoys seeing our feathered friends sliced and diced by the Condor Cuisinarts.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Roberts did, here, exactly what a judge is supposed to do--not impose his own opinion as to whether a law or ordinance is foolish, but evaluate its constitutionality according to established principles and precedents. It is worth noting, too, that Liu described Roberts' opinion in this case as though it were outside the mainstream, while in fact Roberts wrote for a unanimous court, and every judge who looked at the case ruled the same way. Liu here betrays the arrogance of the left-wing academic: anyone who disagrees with me is an extremist, even if his disagreement represents a consensus among competent jurists.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) scored a major success. The PVV came in first in Almere (with 21.5 percent of the vote) and second in The Hague (with 16.9 percent). These are two of the country's major cities.

Wilders is a breath of fresh air:

Wilders defends Dutch sovereignty by, among other things, opposing the EU's centralizing policies. He defends Dutch identity by opposing the Islamization of the Netherlands. He seeks to accomplish this by, among other things, halting Islamic immigration. He also favors deporting immigrants who commit crimes, or who call for jihad or the imposition of Islamic law.

Wilders is a harsh critic of the Koran. It was his film on the subject, "Fitna," that got him banned in Britain.

On June 9 of this year, the Netherlands will hold its parliamentary elections. A poll taken yesterday by Dutch state television predicts that Wilders will gain 24 of the 150 parliamentary seats, which would make the PVV the third most represented party in the country. However, according to Belien, the De Hond poll, which many consider to be the Netherlands' most respected, predicted yesterday that the PVV will win 27 seats, the most of any party.

As someone who was born in the Netherlands, I am very, very encouraged by this development. The Netherlands in particular, despite its reputation for being a cradle of liberty (and libertarianism when it comes to sex and drugs) is in reality a politically repressed society in which consensus is the most highly prized quality in politics. The Netherlands has long been a socialist society with wage controls that forced my father, a small business owner, to pay his employees under the table to keep them.

It's the sort of society that Obama and his ilk would love to recreate here. It's also the reason that you will find Dutchmen all over the world, particularly in the US, Canada and Australia as they leave their home country and travel thousands of miles to find a better, freer life.

The Netherlands is a crowded country of burghers without any grandeur, a flat, pedestrian place know for its tulip beds, its toy town and its red light district. I would not want to live there ... again.

The American people are saying "No" to healthcare. Hopefully Congress will listen to us instead of Date Raping us with this healthcare bill. Congress, No means NO.......the mainstream media and left are trying to date rape us on a daily basis. In the past we acquiesced far too much, and now, when we are putting our foot down to say "NO" they are getting mad and hostile.

This observation, famously made by Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna as the powers debated the fate of the turncoat King of Saxony, reminded the crowned heads of Europe that all of them had at one time or another worked with Napoleon. Talleyrand himself had served the emperor as foreign minister and trusted ally before switching to the other side as Napoleon’s power waned — and his megalomania grew.

These days, it’s The New York Times that is redefining treason. Three weeks ago, anyone who pointed at the lack of public confidence in climate science was aiding and abetting those horrible climate ‘deniers.’ Treason against Planet Earth! You had to be some kind of dread ‘right wing blogger’ or talk radio host to point out that blunders and arrogance had undermined the credibility of climate scientists and ended any short term chance of serious global agreement on urgent measures to stop global warming.

But a story this morning by John Broder gently lets Times readers know that something has gone badly wrong.

WASHINGTON — For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.

But the volume of criticism and the depth of doubt have only grown, and many scientists now realize they are facing a crisis of public confidence and have to fight back. Tentatively and grudgingly, they are beginning to engage their critics, admit mistakes, open up their data and reshape the way they conduct their work.

Admit mistakes? Open up their data? Change the way the work? You mean there was something wrong with the way climate science was operating last year? Is the Times telling us that the climate scientists–on the basis of whose work the whole world is debating complex and far-reaching changes in its economic structure and political governance–were using slipshod and careless procedures that need to be fixed?

Gosh, one has to ask, if these terrible things were going on for such a long time, why didn’t the New York Times notice this earlier on? Why didn’t the New York Times break this important story back when it was news, rather than lamely sweeping up at the end of the parade? Could it be that a climate of politically-correct group-think inhibited the editors and reporters at the country’s newspaper of record from recognizing a one of the major stories of the decade? Could the environmental writers at the Times be just a teensy bit too close to their sources?

Read the whole thing. Then keep in mind that people rarely change their worldview. Instead, if they have hold of the levers of power, they try to change the world to fit their perception of reality. The people at the Times are no different.

Mark Steyn comments on the prosecution of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for "Islamophobia" and how that's working out for the Dutch establishment.

Gee, prosecuting Geert Wilders for "Islamophobia" in a politically rigged show trial seems to be working out just swell for the Dutch establishment. Local election watch from EuroNews:

Attention is also on Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party which is contesting locally for the first time after its strong showing in the European elections.

From Time:

The real victors in the next elections could end up being smaller parties at the fringes of mainstream politics, with polls indicating that the anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Geert Wilders might take second place.

From The Financial Times:

Early results from Dutch local elections on Wednesday night indicated that the far-right anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders was on course to make big gains in a closely watched vote ahead of a general election in June.

From The Guardian:

Big Gains For Far-Right Leader Geert Wilders

From Agence France-Presse:

...the big winner being extreme right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders whose Party for Freedom (PVV) is now estimated by some to be the most popular.

Asking the question that all these reporters miss because of their own prejudices:

...one is struck by the media boilerplate: Wilders is the "extreme" "far-right" "fringe", but the parties he beats are the "mainstream"? That there is a lot of what's wrong with the European political discourse. Maybe he only seems so "extreme" and "far" because you're the one out on the fringe.

Defining your opponents as evil has always been the way of tyrants in positions of power. Hitler did it, Stalin did it, Mao did it ... all with holocaust results.

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that "no criminality has been found" after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

I'm just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough "investigation" first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I'm not a lawyer -- oh, wait, yes, I am -- but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

That this inexperienced travesty of a chief executive, Obama, more a byproduct of timing and media collaboration, than his own worth, or accomplishment, is personally advocating for the so-called nuclear option is the final straw.

It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option, reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.

Reconcile this, you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk -

He follows with this:

Only a fool with no clear appreciation of, or for, America past and present, would dare undertake what this pustule in the White House is attempting to do.

...And there's this:

This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.

The gloves are coming off. I am reminded of the surprise on the part of Democrats during the 2000 Florida vote re-count when they found out that the Right can man the barricades. I really don't think that the Leftists in congress are afraid enough of the consequences of their actions. They think that the worst that can happen to them is that they will lose an election and go back to well cushioned lives in academia or some highly compensated job in the quasi-governmental social services sector.

If the New York Times is the print edition of the Liberal establishment, PBS is the electronic media voice of state sponsored Progressivism. Having seen their saviour's popularity plummet like a meteorite hitting the earth's atmosphere, the denizens of PBS-land feel the need to point their man to serving their parochial desires. Having created a class of people whose education and attitude make them marginally employable. Combine that with an economy that's being suffocated by the Obama administration like a member of Hamas in a Dubai hotel room, and you have an unemployment rate among younger Blacks around 44%.

Two months after ending his annual State of the Black Union conference, Tavis Smiley is gathering African-American advocates to press the case for a "black agenda."

The decision was motivated by what Smiley called recent statements from some black leaders downplaying the need for President Barack Obama to specifically help African-Americans.

"I was compelled to do it because of this debate," the activist and PBS talk show host said Wednesday.

The panel discussion will be March 20 at Chicago State University. Panelists include advertising pioneer Tom Burrell, professors Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux.

It should be noted that all the panelists are highly compensated and have never been known to meet a payroll.

The people who wish to deprive you of your individual rights to defend yourself are wealthy, upper class, influential intellectuals. They can afford their own protective forces. They can demand and get real-time police protection. For the vast majority, police are a reactive force who come to the crime scene after your are victimized.

I was recently burglarized in broad daylight, the thieves carrying off a flat screen TV, a favorite of the current crop of burglars. The police showed up about 15 minutes after I called on arriving home. At least 5 officers eventually showed up at my home over a two hour period after my discovery. They were polite, searched the house for the burglars who were long gone, took some pictures and dusted for prints. There is zero chance that I will get my TV back. But that's what police do for the ordinary citizen: take notes and records after the crime has been committed and the perpetrators have left. Sometimes the criminal is particularly stupid and leaves witnesses; but most crimes are never solved and police are not responsible for preventing crimes. The best the can hope for is catching the criminal. And that's not much recompense for someone who home or body has been violated.

An armed citizenry is not a perfect solution, but protecting oneself with locks, alarm systems and - eventually - guns is better than waiting for the police to mark off the crime scene.